On thing about Louisville coach Rick Pitino, he isn't bashful. He isn't shy about speaking his mind or throwing out ideas to spur debate.

Still irritated about having to play Syracuse (the Big East's preseason favorite) and Pitt (No. 3) twice next season in the league's imbalanced schedule, Pitino this week threw out a radical idea for when TCU becomes the Big East's 17th member in 2012.

Pitino wants the league to go back to two divisions and--a la the way major-league baseball used to operate--play only teams in your division during the regular season and not face non-division foes until the Big East Tournament.

"You build rivalries within your division," Pitino wrote on his blog. "Each team would play 16 league games. Everything would be fair and level for everyone. The tournament at MSG (Madison Square Garden) is where we will have cross competition. After the byes, East 1 will play West bottom and vice versa. We would all play each other twice in our division (during the regular season). Rivalries will be created. And the schedule will be fair for everyone. It's food for thought.

"We need something bold for the best basketball conference in America."

For argument's sake, Pitino would place all the football-playing schools on one side and the non-football schools on the other:

Mission accomplished. Almost immediately after Pitino hit the button to post his blog Thursday, Big East coaches have been abuzz about his proposal.

"The best way to do this is divisional play," Pitino later told ESPN. "I don't care how the divisions are broken down. That's irrelevant. We can build rivalries. I did it by football and basketball, but that's not the way I would want to see it. I just did that conveniently."

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Big East officials say they haven't talked about going back to divisions for the first time since 2002-03. Several of Pitino's peers applauded his attempt to think differently all the while poking holes in his idea:

* The football/non-football split would be a non-starter, simply because that would fuel speculation about the conference completely splitting in two.

* A true intra-division round-robin wouldn't be possible without further expansion because one division would have nine teams and the other eight. As in, one division would have 14 league games and the other 16.

* No matter a division split, all teams would want to maintain regular trips to recruiting hotbeds in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. As in, nobody would want to be in a division without Villanova or Georgetown.

"We've been eight-plus bids a year, I think, since we've gone to 16," Notre Dame coach Mike Brey told ESPN. "We had a record 11 last season. That's something to be proud of and this has helped us all. The league has great inventory whether we're in divisions or not. That's one of our strengths. That's another thing to be careful about in any change."